In an appeal to the European Union on reaching a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday said an end to Israeli presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would eradicate terrorism across the globe.Speaking to European Parliament lawmakers, Abbas also underscored Ramallah’s support for a two-state solution as outlined in the current French peace plan and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, and pleaded with EU lawmakers to save Palestinians from Israeli “provocations,” including what he said were calls by rabbis to poison Palestinians’ water — repeating a hoax story.“We are against terrorism, in whatever form it may take, and whoever carries it out,” Abbas told members of the European Parliament to a resounding applause.“Once the occupation ends, terrorism will disappear, there will be no more terrorism in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world,” he said.

A few days ago, I posted about a blood libel originating with the PLO: that a prominent Rabbi had issued a religious decree “allowing Israeli settlers in the West Bank to poison Palestinian water sources in Palestinian towns.”I thoroughly debunked the blood libel, prompting anti-Israel douchebloggerTM Richard Silverstein to accuse me of inventing it to begin with.Well now further confirmation this originated with the PLO, with none other than Mahmoud Abbas raising it in a speech to the EU parliament within the last hour.Based on an auto-translation:During a speech before the European Parliament ..Abbas: a week ago, a number of rabbis have declared poisoning the water in order to kill the Palestinians. Is this not incitement?So now, not only is he repeating the libel, but is now claiming more than one Rabbi has made the decree.

The bottom line is that, after more than two decades of PA indoctrination, Palestinians who have been living under Palestinian civilian control are far more anti-Israel and less willing to compromise than they were in 1986, and also than their peers who spent those decades under Israeli civilian control. Nor is that surprising when you examine what the PA teaches its children.Earlier this month, IMPACT-SE released its latest study of Palestinian schoolbooks. Inter alia, it found, maps generally omit Israel, and even pre-1967 Israel is referred to as land under Israeli “occupation.” Jewish history in the Holy Land isn’t merely ignored, but actively erased: In one egregious example, the Jerusalem Post reported, “Hebrew letters are removed from a trilingual stamp from the British Mandate period.” Some books even actively promote jihad, like this line from an eighth-grade text: “Oh brother, the oppressors have exceeded all bounds and jihad and sacrifice are necessary.”Last year, Palestinian Media Watch released its own study of Palestinian hate education, which noted that at least 25 schools are named for Palestinian terrorists, whom students are actively encouraged to view as role models. In a film shown on official PA television, for instance, one student at a school named for Dalal Mughrabi–perpetrator of the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history–said her “life’s ambition is to reach the level that the martyr fighter Dalal Mughrabi reached,” the Jerusalem Post reported.Another clip from televised news in the PA showed a boy saying he learned in school to “fight the Jews, kill them and defeat them,” and another told children that Jews are “Satan with a tail.”The report also contains chapters on incitement in Palestinian textbooks, educational materials glorifying Hitler, and the PA policy of blocking joint peace-building activities between Palestinian and Israeli children.Moreover, what children learn in school is reinforced by nonstop incitement from PA officials and the PA-controlled media. Just this week, for instance, the PA Foreign Ministry accused a nonexistent Israeli rabbi of urging his followers to poison Palestinian wells, a libel PA President Mahmoud Abbas repeated in his speech to the European Parliament on Thursday. Also this week, the official PA television station broadcast a Ramadan program telling viewers that Nazareth, Haifa, Jaffa, and Acre–all cities in pre-1967 Israel–are part of “holy Palestine which is a waqf [Islamic trust]. Therefore it is forbidden to relinquish a single grain of its soil.” Last week, the PA education minister visited a school to “honor” the “martyr” who murdered an Israeli policewoman in February.

It is not easy for an Arab journalist to criticize his or her leaders. If there is one thing Arab dictators cannot tolerate, it is criticism, especially when it comes from an Arab journalist, columnist or political opponent.For many years, Palestinians were hoping that one day they would enjoy freedom of expression under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA). But more than two decades after the establishment of the PA, Palestinians have learned that democracy and freedom of speech are still far from being introduced to their society.Since then, Palestinians have also learned that their leaders are "untouchable" and above criticism. Both Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, have even taught Palestinians that "insulting" their president is a crime and an act of treason.During the past two decades, several Palestinians who dared to criticize Abbas or Arafat have been punished in different ways.The latest victim of this campaign against critics is Jihad al-Khazen, a prominent Lebanese journalist and columnist who recently wrote on article about the need for the "failed and corrupt" Palestinian Authority leadership to retire.Al-Khazen, a veteran journalist with the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, is now under attack by the PA. The goal: deterrence of free speech.

The above cartoon showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a Nazi with a swastika tattooed on his arm was posted today on one of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Movement's websites.The cartoon titled "Knockout" shows a boxer representing "Palestine" - his glove is in the colors of the Palestinian flag and labelled: "The State of Palestine" - delivering the knockout blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has a swastika tattooed on his arm, Stars of David on his gloves, and the name "Netanyahu" on his belt. [Website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission, June 23, 2016]A few days ago, the same Fatah website showed Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman as Islamic State executioner Jihadi John:

About three weeks ago, I was sitting on the stairway in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, listening to the various tour guides discussing a curious ladder on the second story window on the right. It was different every time, but they agreed on one thing, The ladder had been there for about two and a half centuries and it remains to this day because the clerics who run the place hate each other almost as much as ISIL/Daesh hates them.Nobody, it seems, knows exactly who put the ladder there and who has the right to move it. So, this “ladder of the status quo” remains, a symbol of Christian hate for all to see, which brings us to the good news from there in ages (and no, the ladder isn’t being removed) This has put thousands of tourists in danger, which is why the Israeli Antiquties authority had repeatedly warned that if something isn’t done, and soon, they would shut the church down and do it themselves.On Feb. 17, 2015, the Jerusalem police threw out the monks who guard the place and preventing hundreds of pilgrims from entering, telling them that UNESCO or no UNESCO, they would fix the thing themselves, unless something was actually done.On November of that year, the UN General Assembly condemned the action: Amazing, huh?Did the UN actually WANT the Aedicule to collapse? Did the Palestinian Authority, on whose behalf the condemnation was passed, actually WANT the Aedicule to collapse?Of course, not, this was just an exercise in sleep voting.About a year and a half later, monks actually decided to actually repair the damn thing. Funding has come in from all over the world, and Some time this week, the iron brace that was built there by the British in 1947 will be taken down, and the extensive renovations will begin.…and oh yeah. There’s a chance that notorious ladder isn’t original. There have been reports that it was removed and replaced several times over the years, most recently in 2009. But who knows….

Overall, when the Mandates to the three territories relinquished by Turkey in the Treaty of Sevres are considered, the Arab People had been ceded Syria (then including what is now Lebanon) and Mesopotamia (now Iraq). In the Treaty of Sevres, the Mandatory was ceded Ottoman sovereignty. That treaty was never ratified. The cession was overtaken by events but in the succeeding Treaty of Lausanne it was ratified. In that Treaty, Ottoman relinquishment of the territory was confirmed. The Jewish People had been named as cestui que trust of the collective political rights to self determination in Palestine,, i.e. “the national rights”. They did not obtain legal domain over any of the territory west of the Jordan River until 1948 when they obtained unified control over the population of the territory within the Green Line, that they had successfully defended against the aggression of the armies of the surrounding Arab States. In 1967 they obtained unified control over the remainder of the beneficial interest, Palestine west of the Jordan.The British thought the Arabs would be satisfied with the 99% + of Ottoman territory in the Middle East they got at San Remo. The Arabs got even more just after San Remo but before the British presented the Mandate trust instrument to the League of Nations. In 1921 they removed from the allocation to the Jewish People the portion of Palestine east of the Jordan. It was only about 40% in 1921 but ended up as a whopping 78%. That left the Jewish People with only about 22% of the less than 1% that became Palestine. Fifty one States, members of the League of Nations, approved and confirmed the Mandate. So did the United States that had not become a member of the League. It confirmed the Mandate in a Joint Congressional Resolution signed by President Harding and a 1924 Treaty signed by President Coolidge. The US Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court in the recent Jerusalem Passport case did not look back far enough to find that the confirmation constituted a tacit recognition of statehood of a state to be formed by the Jewish People. (See 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Obligations of States, Article 7). The trust was a self executing legal instrument so that it became effective without further action by the Palestine Permanent Mandates Committee once its conditions had been met.Try as they may, the Arabs and Soviet Union have never made a showing that the Mandate trust was terminated before 1967. They usually rely on “international law” in support of their bogus claims but the relevant facts just aren’t there. Additionally they rely on threats of violence and actual violence. The issue of whether Arabs or Jews have the national rights to Palestine is res judicata.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas turned down an invitation to meet with President Reuven Rivlin while the two leaders are in Brussels, an Israeli official said Thursday.Rivlins office told The Times of Israel the Palestinian leader “refused to accept a European initiative to set a meeting between the two.”Earlier this week, European Parliament President Martin Schulz sought to arrange what would have been the first meeting between Rivlin and Abbas as both visited the European capital to address MEPs on regional peace initiatives.After speaking with Rivlin on Wednesday, Schulz told reporters he hoped the two leaders would cross paths when Abbas arrived at the assembly later that evening.“I hope (Abbas) will arrive in due time before President Rivlin will leave, so my answer to you is that the diplomatic progress I wish depends a bit on the timetables of both,” he said.“If we achieve that both are crossing the floor in the European Parliament, I think they will not run away from each other so I will do my best,” Schulz added.Rivlin interjected: “I can assure you that I will not run away.”

It’s odd that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to meet with Israelis leaders, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said upon learning he had been snubbed by the Palestinian leader in Brussels.“On a personal level I find it strange that President Mahmoud Abbas, my friend Abu Mazen, refused again and again to meet with Israeli leaders,” Rivlin said.Instead Abbas “turns again and again to the support of the international community,” Rivlin said.“We can talk. We can talk directly and find a way to build confidence,” Rivlin said.He spoke during a joint press conference with the European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.Both Rivlin and Abbas are simultaneously visiting the European Union’s main governmental headquarters to talk with Mogherini and to address the European Parliament about the possibilities for jump-starting the peace process which has been frozen for the last two years.But while they walked down the halls of the same buildings to discuss resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there was no interaction between the two men.

Israel must remain first and foremost a national homeland, and a safe haven for the Jewish people, President Reuven Rivlin said on Wednesday in his inaugural address to the European Parliament.The president also told the assembly that current conditions are not ripe to making peace, and the posited French initiative will move peace even further away.“The State of Israel is by no means a compensation for the Holocaust,” Rivlin told the assembled parliamentarians.“But the Holocaust has posited as a basic tenet the necessity and vitality of the return of the Jewish people to history, as a nation taking its fate in its own hands.”Rivlin voiced his belief that the massive criticism aimed at Israel in Europe stems from a misunderstanding and an impatience toward this existential need of the Jewish nation and the State of Israel.The president said Israelis are feeling a growing sense of impatience toward Europe.

His criticism of Paris’s efforts to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table joined a growing chorus of scorn from senior Israeli officials. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has derided the French proposal, and a senior Israeli official this week said the EU’s efforts smacked of colonialism.“The French initiative suffers from fundamental faults. The attempt to return to negotiations for negotiations’ sake, not only does not bring us near the long-awaited solution, but rather drags us further away from it,” the head of state said in an address in Brussels.Like other international initiatives to reach a peace agreement, Rivlin said the French plan’s inflexible “all or nothing” approach to the implementation of a two-state solution ignores the total lack of trust between Israelis and Palestinians.“This paradigm relies on the assumption that the problem which is the crux of the matter in this bloody and painful conflict is simply the lack of good faith on both parts, and that if we only exert pressure on ‘them’, on us,’ they will adhere to a permanent agreement and to a state of peace,” he said. “The most fundamental trait of Israeli-Palestinian relations today which is, to my deep regret, a total lack of trust between the parties on all levels; between the leaderships and the peoples.”But, the lack of good will, he said, is not only “fundamentally erroneous,” it ignores the practical considerations of the conflict.

The more chaotic the world becomes, the more it busies itself with ingenuities that aim to “resolve” the conflict in the Middle East. Lately, the world has become such a mess that even peace initiatives seem hard-pressed to coexist. Currently, the EU-backed French initiative is the world’s new darling. However, only a few weeks ago it was the phoenix-like Saudi/Arab initiative that resurfaced and grabbed the media’s attention. Now, in the midst of the rush to endorse the French initiative (and chide its critics), there emerges a pre-election peace agreement, no less, between Mahmoud Abbas and current opposition leader, Isaac Herzog, drafted when he aspired to become prime minister.Before the Six Day War, the majority of the world supported the existence of the State of Israel, some with great enthusiasm. Some countries even championed our cause during the Six Day War. On June 12, 1967, two days after the end of the war, the Der Spiegel cover item read, “Israel’s Blitz Campaign.” Evidently still charmed by Israel’s miraculous and overwhelming victory, and in line with Germany’s favorable stance toward Israel, the paper’s feature item mused poetically about the Israeli army:“They rolled like Rommel, won as Patton, and sang at that. ‘This is a singing army. Your warriors sing like the hero of Hemingway,’ marveled war correspondent James Reston. In 60 hours the armored sons of Zion smashed the Arab encirclement of Israel. They shooed the pan-Arab prophets from their dreams of dominance, and overthrew Egypt's Nasser into the depths of the Nile. Pharaoh took responsibility for the lost war and submitted his resignation.”

Israel and Turkey are close to finalizing a deal to restore diplomatic ties that broke down following the May 2010 Gaza flotilla raid.Israeli and Turkish officials will meet on Sunday in an effort to clinch the deal.Within the framework of the reconciliation talks, Israel has received assurances that Turkey will close down the Hamas headquarters in Istanbul. However, Turkey will be allowed to maintain diplomatic contacts with Hamas.As part of the deal, Turkey will be permitted to build and operate a power station in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.On Wednesday, Ibrahim Kalin, the spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Turkey and Israel were "reaching the end of a lengthy process."

In a sign of improving government ties, an Israeli and a Turkish think tank are set to hold a joint event in Istanbul with an MK and a Turkish Foreign Ministry official.MK Ksenia Svetlova (Zionist Union), who is to participate in Friday’s session with Turkish Foreign Ministry official Mesut Ozcan, told The Jerusalem Post that “it has been a long time since an MK appeared officially and publicly in Turkey.”Svetlova said she is happy that the positive atmosphere allows such a meeting to take place in Turkey, and speculated that a deal on repaired relations between the two countries could come early next week.The event is the latest in a series since 2012 between the Ramat Gan-based Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies and the Global Political Trends Center (GPoT) at Istanbul Kültür University, and supported by Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

With rapprochement negotiations between Israel and Turkey reportedly nearing completion, Ankara on Wednesday said Turkey would maintain its relationship with Islamist terror group Hamas, denying reports that severing ties with the de facto rulers of the Gaza Strip was ever part of the agreement.Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu said during an Ankara press conference that communication between Ankara and Hamas was essential to reaching regional peace.“Our contacts will continue in the context of the [importance] of the unity of Hamas and Fatah in Palestine and in the context of making contribution to the Middle East peace process,” he said, according to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News.Since the terror group seized power of the Gaza Strip in 2007, even Israel, Cavusoglu said, has “acknowledge[d] that there can be no permanent peace or solution without Hamas.”“That’s why there is no condition called ‘Hamas’ to normalize our relations with Israel,” Cavusoglu said.

In Fort Worth, Texas, the world caught a glimpse of the future of the Israeli Air Force on Wednesday with the unveiling of the F-35 stealth fighter jet, the next big thing in avionics.The fifth generation F-35 Lightning II — known in Israel as the Adir in Hebrew, meaning “awesome” or “mighty” — will remain in the United States until December, when the first two planes will make their journey across the Atlantic to their new home in Israel. Between six and seven more planes will make the trip each following year.“Today Israel is surrounded by unprecedented military threats,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said during the ceremony.“The airplanes will improve the IDF’s ability to protect Israel from the region’s growing threats,” he said.

Once they touch down at Nevatim Air Base this December, the Israel Air Force will begin a race against the clock to make the stealth aircraft a key part of daily operations within one year.According to Brig.-Gen. Tal Kelman, IAF chief of staff, the planes will receive by December 2017 the status of initial operational capability, meaning that little time will pass between when Israel receives the jets and when they begin flying missions.As soon as they become active within the IAF, the planes will begin taking over jobs currently carried out by F-15s and F-16s – flights that are critical to maintaining Israeli security – and F-35s will begin performing them at a level previously unseen in the Middle East.Top priority missions will include intelligence-gathering flights to glean data on Israel’s enemies. Intelligence flights will deploy the plane’s array of sensors, and call on its ability to share large quantities of data on a military Intranet in real time.Such data can be used to learn about vital security developments, or be stored for later use if needed.

Israel will install its own cyber defenses on the F-35 jets it will receive this year, the air force's Chief of Staff, Brig.-Gen. Tal Kelman, said on Tuesday.Kelman praised the jet across the board, saying it would significantly upgrade Israel's ability to defend itself, but added that he had been greatly disturbed by the issue of cyber defense for the stealth aircraft.After negotiations with the US and the plane's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, an agreement was reached enabling the Israel Air Force (IAF) to create Israeli cyber defense solutions.Kelman said the IAF is also striving to achieve an independent ability to maintain the aircraft within the country's borders, due to daily fighter jet operational flights, and the need to ensure rapid deployment in the event of a sudden armed conflict."We are integrating Israeli defense companies to carry out some of the maintenance," he said. The US will still be responsible for basic maintenance functions, which it will carry out of an installation at the IAF's Nevatim airbase in southern Israel.

Israeli officials tell a different story. While it's true that the Jewish State is the only country allowed to spend U.S. defense assistance on its own defense industry, much of that funding goes to projects that end up benefitting the U.S. military. In the case of Iron Dome, Congress eventually passed legislation that required Israel to share its related intellectual property with U.S. defense firms."The 26 percent is used primarily on joint ventures between the U.S. and Israel," Yair Lapid, a former finance minister and leader of the centrist Yesh Atid block in the Knesset, told me last week. "Look at the new F35b; there are systems on it from Elbit," he said, referring to an Israeli defense concern. "It's this money that becomes the technological edge the U.S. has."Like almost everything else in Israel, there is no consensus on whether Netanyahu should just accept the aid package as Obama proposes. Moshe Kahlon, Israel's finance minister and a former member of Netanyahu's Likud Party, called on the prime minister this week to take the deal as it is, even though he acknowledged it could be better. Meanwhile, a member of Kahlon's party, the former Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren, has urged Netanyahu to go slow, according to the Jerusalem Post.Elliott Abrams, who was a senior National Security Council official under President George W. Bush, told me he agrees with Oren. "If you do it this year, you will give Obama a talking point for why he is the best person for Israeli security, ever," he said. "And Obama will misuse that in his last months in office to produce his parameters for the peace talks."Abrams has a point. Obama has been doing this since he came into office. He has boosted Israel's defense subsidy, as he has distanced America from Israel in both the Iran negotiations and on settlement growth in the West Bank. The lavish military aid was political cover for a foreign policy Israel's leaders opposed.

Jonathan Pollard has won a small victory in his latest legal battle for relative freedom. Specifically, U.S. government prosecutors decided on Tuesday not to insist on filing a "classified" brief in the current legal battle over Pollard's parole restrictions.Pollard was released on parole from U.S. prison after an unprecedented – for his crime of passing classified information to an American ally, namely, Israel – 30 years in jail last November. He was then given very severe parole restrictions: Home curfew from 7 PM to 7AM, constant wearing of an electronic bracelet for GPS tracking of his location, and constant monitoring and inspection of his computers, as well as those of his employer, if one would agree to hire him under such conditions. The daily recharging of the GPS bracelet involves the desecration of the Sabbath.In response to Pollard's suit against the harsh restrictions, a federal judge ruled last December that the Parole Commission must explain why it placed the "broad and severe parole restrictions" on Pollard. The judge also asked whether Pollard, after all these years, still retained “in his head” secret information that could endanger the public and thereby justify the severity of the special conditions. It took nearly four months, but the Commission finally sent Pollard’s attorneys a “Supplemental Notice of Action,” supposedly meant to explain the rationale for the harsh restrictions. Pollard’s pro-bono attorneys felt that the Notice actually did no such thing, and filed a brief accusing the Commission of ignoring the court ruling and urging that she order that the restrictions be removed.The next step was when the government prosecutors asked to file an "ex-parte" response, meaning that Pollard's attorneys would not be allowed to see it. In response, the ruling of Judge Katherine B. Forrest showed that she was not pleased with the government request. She ruled that the government must disclose the “gist or substance” of its secret submission, and "must justify the necessity of any ex-parte filing by including an ex-parte declaration or affidavit from an intelligence community official describing why Pollard’s counsel does not need to know the information contained in the filing.”

An Israeli military court handed life sentences to four Palestinians found guilty of murdering an Israeli couple in a terror attack in the West Bank last October.Eitam and Naama Henkin were shot dead as they were traveling in their car near the West Bank settlement of Itamar on October 1, 2015. Their four small children – the oldest was nine years old – were in the back seat and witnessed their murder, but were uninjured.Four days later the IDF arrested a four-man Hamas terror cell over the shooting.“The military court in Samaria handed two life sentences and another 30 years to each of the four members of the Hamas cell that carried out the attack in which Eitam and Naama Henkin were murdered in front of their children,” the IDF said in a statement.The four were named as Yahia Muhammad Naif Abdullah Hajj Hamad, who carried out the shooting itself; Samir Zahir Ibrahim Kusah, the driver of the car, who has also been linked to previous terror attacks; gunman Karem Lufti Fatahi Razek, who was wounded by gunfire from one of his fellow cell members during the attack; and Zir Ziad Jamal Amar, who cleared the way for the car to carry out the attack, the prosecution said.

Israeli lawmakers are drafting legislation that could force Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media platforms to remove online postings that incite terrorism.“There should be some measure of accountability for Internet companies regarding the illegal activities and content that is published through their services,” Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said this week at the 6th Annual International Cybersecurity Conference in Tel Aviv.Shaked said that Internet companies and state governments need to find ways to cooperate so that malicious and criminal content can be quickly taken down. Israel could use a judicial injunction to have the content removed.“The Justice Ministry is taking a leadership role in this—for example, we are promoting cooperation with content providers, sensitizing them as to content that violates Israeli law or providers’ term of service,” said Shaked.

A Jewish teenager was injured Tuesday night in Tel Aviv by what he claimed was an Arab gang who stabbed him with a broken bottle and hurled anti-Semitic abuse at him, calling him a “dirty Jew.”Sahar Tusia, 17, required medical treatment after he was assaulted in a park on Lavon Street in the south of the city near Jaffa, Channel 2’s website reported.The teenager explained he had been going to the park regularly to train in preparation ahead of his induction into the IDF and had already had a previous verbal clash with the gang that attacked him.“It all began two weeks ago when I went out to exercise in the park on Lavon Street in Tel Aviv,” he said.

Palestinian security officials announced today they will seek the arrest of Rahab the harlot, whom they accuse of collaborating with the Zionist occupation of this city.Riydat Adma, a Fatah spokesman, said his organization convinced Palestinian Authority officials to issue a warrant for Rahab’s detainment and interrogation, both to penalize her for violating Palestinian law and to determine what, if any, intelligence she has divulged to her Zionist handlers.“We fear this Rahab person, already known to be of loose morals, may also have committed treason against our people, and we will apprehend her and bring her to justice,” promised Adma. “At the moment she has gone to ground, and no one appears to know where she or her family have fled. It is possible they have escaped to Zionist-held territory, but when we drive the colonialist invaders out of the land we will not forget to seek out and exact retribution from those who undermine their own people.”Police officials said Rahab ran a brothel in the wall of the city, and its clientele included high-ranking figures in Palestinian society, putting her in a position to gain information potentially valuable to the Zionists. “We cannot directly assess the damage at this point, but it is worrisome,” allowed an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Recent corruption scandals may jeopardize stability in the West Bank, with Palestinians turning their ire on the Palestinian Authority and not just Israel, an Arab intelligence source told Breitbart Jerusalem.The Palestinian media reported this week that cronies of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, presidential advisor Mahmoud Al-Habash, and Director of Intelligence Majed Faraj, were appointed to lofty public positions amid mounting unemployment among university graduates.It was reported that Habash’s son was hired as a state prosecutor even though he graduated from university with a mediocre overall grade of 53 percent.Rattled by the public outcry, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ associates went on the defensive and accused his challenger, Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan, of waging a smear campaign against the president.The Arab source said that intelligence reviews indicate that Abbas’ popularity hit rock bottom against the backdrop of the corruption scandals and the diplomatic stalemate vis-à-vis Israel. He added that a popular uprising in the West Bank is not an unlikely scenario – only that this time it could be directed against Abbas and not just Israel.“The Palestinian Authority that has so far proved immune to the Arab Spring could witness the rise of a popular resistance movement, a ‘Palestinian Spring’ that would seek to expunge Abbas along with corruption at the top,” he said.

On the plus side, Hezbollah is currently bogged down in a conflict in Syria, trying to prop up Iran’s client regime, and thus is too distracted to risk a war against Israel. On the downside, the nuclear deal with Washington will further enrich Iran, and some of the oil benefits are certain to trickle down to Hezbollah, which has emerged as Iran’s most potent and reliable proxy force.The IDF needs to prepare for war and the Israeli population for the possibility of spending long weeks living in bunkers with the electrical grid not functioning. That is a grim fate that can best be averted if the U.S. and its allies were to pursue a strategy of weakening Hezbollah before it can strike again against Israel.Hezbollah’s greatest vulnerability at the moment is the extent to which it is reliant on the unpopular and murderous Assad regime. If the U.S. and its allies pushed to topple Assad, that would do great damage to Hezbollah’s prestige and capabilities.The U.S. could further undermine Hezbollah by taking advantage of popular dissatisfaction in Lebanon. Hezbollah is fighting not against Israeli “occupiers” but against the people of Syria, who do not want to live under an unpopular tyrant. Even many Lebanese Shiites are not happy to have Hezbollah turn their country into an outpost of the Persian Empire, and that dissatisfaction could possibly be fomented by a skillful campaign of political and information warfare of the kind that the U.S. often deployed in the early days of the Cold War but seldom in the decades since.Or we can just hang back, do nothing, and wait for the day when our allies in Israel are assailed by an unprecedented barrage of missiles from next door–as if Manhattan were being rocketed from New Jersey.

Bahrain's controversial decision to revoke the citizenship of Isa Qassim, a top Shi'ite cleric in the Kingdom, appears to be detrimental not only to the local government, but also to the Iranian regime, the major critic of Bahrain's move.Images of Bahraini Shi'ites taking to the streets undisturbed to protest their government's decision that were disseminated on social media networks were received with great wonder in Iran.Echoing the local criticism over the absence of similar freedom of protest in Iran, Mohammad Nourizad, a prominent Iranian opposition leader, wrote a post on Facebook provoking the commander of the Iranian Revolution Guard's Quds Force, Qassem Suleimani."Mr. Suleimani, these are the supporters of Isa Qassim who gathered outside his house in Bahrain. Can we also gather outside the houses of Mehdi Karoubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi (two prominent Iranian opposition leaders who contested the presidential elections in 2009)?" Nourizad asked.Nourizad was referring to the 2009 elections due to the mass protests that broke out in the state after it was discovered that they were rigged. The Revolutionary Guard played a major role in suppressing these popular protests by violently killing and injuring dozens of protestors.Watching images from Bahrain, Iranian social media activists said the protest movement in Bahrain shows that Shi'ites in the Kingdom have a great extent of freedom, stating that "had such a gathering taken place in Iran, it would have been dispersed violently by the Revolutionary Guard and security forces."

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